The musicians

Billy Corgan

Musician

Even though the Smashing Pumpkins are bigger internationally than they are stateside these days, Corgan’s sticking with Chicago—he’s even written more than a dozen folk songs about such local subjects as the Great Chicago Fire and the Cubs-Sox rivalry. Corgan recounts wandering around Lincoln Park one emotionally tough day only to end up in front of Columbus Hospital where he was born. The moment “struck me as quintessentially Chicago,” he muses. The city “has this unassuming quality where you can find yourself back to where you started without really realizing it.”—Frank Sennett

The single “G.L.O.W.,” out this month, is the Smashing Pumpkins’ last release of ’08, but “a multiyear concept album” might be in the offing, Corgan says.

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